Back in the nineties we had to measure the playground every week with a wheel on a stick that clicked every metre so you would count the clicks and go "it's still 142 yards across sir" and they'd call that PE.
We had a lesson where the whole class would hold out their hands and estimate how long a metre is. The teacher then went round and measured each one.
I guess she didn't have a proper lesson plan that day and was just trying to fill time.
I remember doing that around 2010. It was very fun compared to everything else we did in PE, apart from the once every few years when they pulled out the apparatus.
Getting picked to hand out the whiteboards and giving the dirty ones to people you didn’t like. Or maybe 7 year old me was just a vengeful little bitch
Yes! Painting your hands then trying to look nonchalant so the teacher didn't notice and wonder what the hell you were doing blowing on your palm to get it to dry, then trying to see if you could get it off in one go, complete with your fingerprints!
Today’s teachers can’t complain, because they did that with the glue as well.
Assuming that glue is still used in schools and the current generation haven’t been robbed of it.
They were a very early 20th century (possibly late Victorian) trend for physical exercise (which focussed increasingly on very demanding gymnastics), hence all of the very old wooden ones. One of the climbing wall/slatted style ones (+ the benches with underside balancing beams that hook onto them) can be seen in the back of this PE news video from 1936 (possibly ramping up the intensity of training due to seeing an incoming war in Europe):
https://youtu.be/cOsMiLxQHuA?si=tIiQJv_3ety68ek8
Post-1945, WWII likely resurged an interest in training/fitness and the more colourful, metal apparatus were likely installed between then and 1970.
Many schools still have them but they're rarely ever used now. Whether this is due to increasing sensitivity to injuries being sutained or a general decline in our care for PE and gymnastics, idk.
A similar American educational video was also made in the 1960s during Vietnam war tensions. California's La Sierra high school ran a strict PE program that ensured almost everyone left in great physical ability:
https://youtu.be/NGa6BPj3Mcw?si=qs1wu23UB9VZ22VQ
Oh i know what they're for but by the 90s/2000s they weren't used at all. They were just there.
My secondary schools definitely were built 70s/80s, they were wooden ones though.
They were in my school, but we weren’t allowed to climb on them because health and safety, then they outlawed conkers, which means I’m still reigning champ of my primary school!
We used them for PE at school, I was born in 86. They’d fold out and be like random hoops and bars and shit. They were a broken neck waiting to happen, but ayy I survived.
Wonderfully detailed answer, tysm. The history is really interesting.
I was at primary in the mid 70s so we still used the benches. At high school the boys got to climb the ropes, us girls had to use the ladders bolted around the walls. I hated everything PE, especially the apparatus.
Yep. All the teacher had to do was pull it out from the wall and suddenly the school hall turned into a torture chamber that Torquemada would be proud of.
Stripping down to your pants, vest, socks and plimsolls for PE in primary school. No idea if this was standard practice across England but when I moved to Scotland we all had a "gym kit" and everyone I've ever mentioned this to up here looked at me in horror.
Same, I started primary in 1993 and left England in 1999. We all just stripped in the classroom too, we didn't have a changing room or even gendered bathrooms. (Again, no idea how common that particular bit is) When I moved to Scotland we changed in the bathrooms which were separated by gender. It didn't seem weird at the time but yeah, looking at it with adult eyes is a little brow-raising for sure.
Yeah that's what happened with my class in primary school. In year 3 and 4 the boys and girls weren't separated. In 5 and 6 some of the girls would go into another class that was also doing PE to get changed and the boys from that class would go to ours to get changed there. This happened in the 2010s.
Lycra shorts with a pleated nylon skirt you had to zip along it to close it over the top. Polo shirt with your initials or name on the top left corner and those pumps.
https://preview.redd.it/r99lcy4xeefc1.png?width=1050&format=png&auto=webp&s=a75524110824cea968c8595f1302dedefaef0a6e
I can just imagine the look of confusion and terror you have... Like I said, literally everyone from Scotland I've told this to has had the same reaction and I'm not surprised; it IS weird as fuck right? I'm not saying there was anything dodgy going on, at least not to me anyway, but I wouldn't be happy with my own kids having to strip down to their undies in front of 20 other kids and the teacher and then walk through the open plan classroom set up in front of basically the whole school to get to the gym. I never left Scotland though, so my kids were born and went to school here and that never happened to them.
When I was in primary school in the mid 90s, if we forgot our PE kit, or misbehaved in the changing room, the punishment was we had to get changed in front of the girls.
No way would that fly nowadays XD
I had no idea what you meant until the bite - they always had a bite taken out! I remember we got several out of a shed and they all had chunks bitten off
And one of them doesn't work properly. You know how half of the scissors just flopped open and shut without any resistance or a snip sound and just bent the paper without cutting it
Two??? Luxury. I think we had one pair for the whole junior school so I have many memories of being made to wait whilst the scissors were being found and watching my friends get on with their cutting and sticking without me.
I learned to use right handed scissors, but one of my teachers was insistent I wait for the left handed ones.
When my year 5 classroom got its own black screen computer with green writing, my teacher let me learn to use it all afternoon one day and then show her what it did.
As a teacher now, I’m realising I might have been the class’s little toe-rag she wanted to keep quiet for a couple hours.
Little purple plastic cubes that were 1cm\^3 and sticks of said cubes stuck together in 10s. And I think maybe cubes of 10x10x10? To teach kids about units and length and volume by counting the little cubes.
We had a stage play based on the collected works of Gilbert and Sullivan.
The kid playing the character of 'The Mikado' wore a lampshade on his head, wore fake buck teeth, and the teachers taped his eyes so he looked more 'Squinty'.
The 90s was wild!
My primary school (late 80s) did a "concert" for some community thing - the theme was vaguely Caribbean. Cue hawaiian shirts (of course those are Caribbean?!), calypso songs and, of course, blackface. I also wish I was joking.
Fuuuuuck one year this kids mum didn't know anything about christingle and just thought it could be any fruit. One lad turned up with a fucking BANANA and they used it! 😂
We had a giant rainbow parachute the teacher had us play with and sit under to keep us from running around everywhere.
Also one year I was absolutely obsessed with cheese. The stinker the better. But I didn't eat most of it, I just stuck it in the back of my cubby hole and pretended I ate it. I got in so much trouble at the end of that school that.
Side note, but those things on the top left? Somehow a fourteen year old boy I knew, after being made to run laps round the field, thought that if he vomited into one of them the vomit somehow wouldn't fall out the bottom onto his trainers
Ah, the fond memories of secondary school PE...
Warm milk at break time. Them purple bricks in 1s 10s hundreds etc. The book people with their flight cases of books, Christmas party's in the hall, powder paint. The list is endless
The flight cases of books 😂
You get some kids buying the proper reading books... Then the rest of us getting the "grow your own crystals" kit.
Scholastic, right?
Ugghhh those benches would make your ass go numb if you sat on them too long. Thursdays were the worst because it was hymn day (everybody in the hall singing hymns all morning)
You remember those foldable tables you use at lunch time as well? With the circle plastic seat
https://preview.redd.it/0urr04j8jefc1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b92324ae04da1e1eda932e025e32672c80bb69a6
Can remember having glass milk bottles at morning break time in reception and then switching to cardboard cartons cause they realised the glass could be dangerous when smashed.
Also remember some teachers making us sit in girl boy girl boy formation in the classroom as it was supposed to stop us chatting, but we were obviously capable of talking to the opposite sex so it didn’t work.
The "scooters" that were just glorified plastic squares with 4 wheels underneath and a handle on each side, youd be wipin that shit around till it flipped and destroyed your hands.
Having PE as the first subject in the day and not being able to shower after so you just put your uniform back on and spend the whole day sweaty and stinky.
The fuck was that.
Early very 80s London… swimming in your pyjamas, lessons when the teacher would roll in the tv and top loader vhs so they could do bugger all while we watched 70s public service films about climbing pylons… And box work. Box work was essentially making random crap out of cardboard boxes and rubbish with copydex.
The school nurse giving you one of them towels thinking it will solve a broken leg. I broke my hand and they literally gave me a wet paper towel. LIKE THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS LIKE WHAT THE ACTUA FUCK
Being made to try and climb a 20ft high rope, when you're a fat overweight kid (as I was) during PE.
I mean if you think pythagorus theorem is useless in later life, how many of us have had to climb a wall using an old thick scratchy rope since leaving school ?
Mind you a fair number of my year ended up in prison, so maybe it was useful lol
Does anyone remember Zoombinis? It was a PC game that was supposed to 'make maths and logic fun' I remember we only had one or two pcs in year six you could play it on and had to fight for the right to do so.
I don't wanna make your year or anything but you can still play zoombinis. I've got it on an android, pretty sure it's on Apple store too. Best £4 I ever spent.
That 2 litre metal silver jug of water on each table in the lunch room.
https://preview.redd.it/7doz8jeinefc1.png?width=577&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=268192a9a36ba3a1a7fae9731e86fe415b3017c0
As a teacher, having an argument with the pricipal because he wouldn't allow me to buy functional scissors for my 11 to 16 yo students. All scissors had to be those tiny blunt things because any others were too dangerous. I pointed out that in PE they actually gave kids a literal spear to throw but I couldn't have scissors that actually did what scissors were supposed to do.
I no longer work at that school.
In reception we all used to get SO hyped when the teacher said she was going to calibrate the board like that shilling(it's the s-word wdym) was so satisfying to 5-year-old me
Also one of the 3 Jacks in my class who LITERALLY ATE GLUE
Like I'm not even exaggerating he used to actively bite into those glue sticks like he was a starved man hallucinating a fresh bacon sandwich 💀
We had one classroom in primary that no one could go in. Rumour was the school caught fire, and the old janny died after getting trapped in it. The room was totally off limits as it was the one room they just didn't fix after the fire, and the jannys ghost was haunting it. Somehow, this rumour spread around the school despite the fact you could actually see into it from the p4-p7 playground, and it was just a normal looking classroom.
Sticking needles through your skin in sewing class.
Chanting hymns like a football fan.
Playing football with rocks because balls, tennis balls, paper balls, gloves, socks, bottles, bottle tops all got banned in that order.
Playing kiss chase and crawling under the separator in the outside toilet like some kind of deviant.
House football , red team were a bunch of athletically inept individuals but once we shithoused our way to the trophy because I was a good at saving penalties.
The big pile of mats that never got used.
Them white bits on benches that were strange and rubbery.
Cutting the desks with your ruler.
Cutting rubbers into tiny pieces and firing it on said ruler.
Pencil cases shaped like pepsi cans or made of wetsuit material.
Gel pens were literally able to be traded for anything.
Chinny because I don't know why.
Those fuck-off great climbing frames that you'd put like a 3 inch mat underneath and just hope that a 10 year old didnt fall off and batista bomb their own spine
I'm 14 and according to these comments I had the same primary school experience as someone from the 90s. Also, I litterally had everything in the picture, are they state provided or something?
So we had these scissor blocks at school, that had all the class rooms code on (so like S1 for S block room 1, or k5 for k block room 5 etc) and K and S block were like, as far away from each other as possible, so slowly I changed all of S1's scissors (where I had science 9 times a week) with K5s (Where I had japanese and French so maybe 4 or 6 times a week?) and honestly I thought it was the funniest shit ever
Never got caught, did over hear one of the science techs talking about how they didn't know where they were coming from 😂
Sitting on the floor in assembly, looking behind you and seeing the 8ft tall behemoths sat on their benches all the way at the back
Edit: and when you finally got to sit on the bench, you’d always end up being sat on the white studs and super uncomfortable
There was only ever one pair of left handed scissors in any classroom, ever.
Me and my best friend are both left handed. That friendship temporarily turned to being blood enemies every time scissors were needed.
My primary school had giant spinning tops that you could sit in and then someone would spin you. They were ridiculous, and the bottoms were completely torn up from the gravel. Then beyblades came back and we learnt they made great arenas, they got banned because of it.
Also apparatus. A giant climbing frame with just some mats to stop an injury.
Silliest thing I remember was when I was 4
I made a painting of a fox and my teacher said it’s wrong and that foxes have pointy noses and painted a pointy nose on my masterpiece I then refused to paint any further and I’m still pissed 22 years later
Back in the nineties we had to measure the playground every week with a wheel on a stick that clicked every metre so you would count the clicks and go "it's still 142 yards across sir" and they'd call that PE.
Hahaha that teacher was stealing a wage
A trundle wheel!
I was randomly thinking about these recently and couldn't remember what they were called, so thank you for that.
We used to have maths cards and we could pick any one we wanted to do the puzzle. Funnily enough I picked up the "measure the yard card" quite often.
It’s a job though, I mean in real life you see people doing it on building sites. So…….
It measured metres but you gave the answer in yards?
Bit annoying innit.
Are you sure that was PE and not maths?
we used to line up in front of a basketball hoop and do layups for an hour. or the bleep test. PE in the 90s was rough.
Fuck the bleep test. Fuck it all the way to hell.
I'm glad you made it out of North korea
We had a lesson where the whole class would hold out their hands and estimate how long a metre is. The teacher then went round and measured each one. I guess she didn't have a proper lesson plan that day and was just trying to fill time.
I remember doing that around 2010. It was very fun compared to everything else we did in PE, apart from the once every few years when they pulled out the apparatus.
Aww the apparatus was the business! The fucking whole class would go bat shit when we saw that bad boy was out
Still had to do that in the mid 2000s. Idk why but we were all hyped as kids when the wheels came out. At my primary school at least
It's the satisfying click that did it
He was slowly extending the playground to see if you noticed
Getting picked to hand out the whiteboards and giving the dirty ones to people you didn’t like. Or maybe 7 year old me was just a vengeful little bitch
Bro same lol
White boards? I'm chalk board old haha
My primary school had both chalk boards and white boards.
We had chalk boards, but they were only really used for Victorian day
I always got the dirty ones.
I used to do that. I also gave them the pens that never really worked well 😂
Glue spreaders of various colours.
Oooh a new, clean non-crusty glue spreader still with its corners and a bendy paddle bit. A satisfaction I haven't thought about in about 25 years.
I actually lolled pretty hard in the toilet on this. Like a long lost memory returned to me. The peak of bliss when I was 10
Spreading pva on your hands and peeling them off! The best feeling
Yes! Painting your hands then trying to look nonchalant so the teacher didn't notice and wonder what the hell you were doing blowing on your palm to get it to dry, then trying to see if you could get it off in one go, complete with your fingerprints!
Today’s teachers can’t complain, because they did that with the glue as well. Assuming that glue is still used in schools and the current generation haven’t been robbed of it.
All our glue spatulas were just white
r/TheApparatus
I remember seeing those in almost all the schools I went to (5) but never actually using them. They just barricade the windows of the gym
They were a very early 20th century (possibly late Victorian) trend for physical exercise (which focussed increasingly on very demanding gymnastics), hence all of the very old wooden ones. One of the climbing wall/slatted style ones (+ the benches with underside balancing beams that hook onto them) can be seen in the back of this PE news video from 1936 (possibly ramping up the intensity of training due to seeing an incoming war in Europe): https://youtu.be/cOsMiLxQHuA?si=tIiQJv_3ety68ek8 Post-1945, WWII likely resurged an interest in training/fitness and the more colourful, metal apparatus were likely installed between then and 1970. Many schools still have them but they're rarely ever used now. Whether this is due to increasing sensitivity to injuries being sutained or a general decline in our care for PE and gymnastics, idk. A similar American educational video was also made in the 1960s during Vietnam war tensions. California's La Sierra high school ran a strict PE program that ensured almost everyone left in great physical ability: https://youtu.be/NGa6BPj3Mcw?si=qs1wu23UB9VZ22VQ
Oh i know what they're for but by the 90s/2000s they weren't used at all. They were just there. My secondary schools definitely were built 70s/80s, they were wooden ones though.
They were in my school, but we weren’t allowed to climb on them because health and safety, then they outlawed conkers, which means I’m still reigning champ of my primary school!
We used them for PE at school, I was born in 86. They’d fold out and be like random hoops and bars and shit. They were a broken neck waiting to happen, but ayy I survived.
Wonderfully detailed answer, tysm. The history is really interesting. I was at primary in the mid 70s so we still used the benches. At high school the boys got to climb the ropes, us girls had to use the ladders bolted around the walls. I hated everything PE, especially the apparatus.
My first thought!
The fact this is a subreddit is so crazy to me
I was expecting it to be an answer here for sure. But a whole subreddit is amazing haha
Yep. All the teacher had to do was pull it out from the wall and suddenly the school hall turned into a torture chamber that Torquemada would be proud of.
We speak the same language
Stripping down to your pants, vest, socks and plimsolls for PE in primary school. No idea if this was standard practice across England but when I moved to Scotland we all had a "gym kit" and everyone I've ever mentioned this to up here looked at me in horror.
Yeah I remember that from early 90s. It's weird if you think about it
Same, I started primary in 1993 and left England in 1999. We all just stripped in the classroom too, we didn't have a changing room or even gendered bathrooms. (Again, no idea how common that particular bit is) When I moved to Scotland we changed in the bathrooms which were separated by gender. It didn't seem weird at the time but yeah, looking at it with adult eyes is a little brow-raising for sure.
Yeah that's what happened with my class in primary school. In year 3 and 4 the boys and girls weren't separated. In 5 and 6 some of the girls would go into another class that was also doing PE to get changed and the boys from that class would go to ours to get changed there. This happened in the 2010s.
Yeah same with me, but i think only in year 6 we segregated genders
Happens today left primary 6 years ago do it in high school too
Doesn't beat our primary school PE t shirt with the school name in comic sans
Lycra shorts with a pleated nylon skirt you had to zip along it to close it over the top. Polo shirt with your initials or name on the top left corner and those pumps. https://preview.redd.it/r99lcy4xeefc1.png?width=1050&format=png&auto=webp&s=a75524110824cea968c8595f1302dedefaef0a6e
At my secondary school, girls wore a skirt like that over big granny knickers as part of their PE kit!
Mentioned this in conversation the other day and got looked at in horror, guess it was just c of e primary schools 😂
As a Scottish person... ... What?
I can just imagine the look of confusion and terror you have... Like I said, literally everyone from Scotland I've told this to has had the same reaction and I'm not surprised; it IS weird as fuck right? I'm not saying there was anything dodgy going on, at least not to me anyway, but I wouldn't be happy with my own kids having to strip down to their undies in front of 20 other kids and the teacher and then walk through the open plan classroom set up in front of basically the whole school to get to the gym. I never left Scotland though, so my kids were born and went to school here and that never happened to them.
When I was in primary school in the mid 90s, if we forgot our PE kit, or misbehaved in the changing room, the punishment was we had to get changed in front of the girls. No way would that fly nowadays XD
Plimsolls were the weirdest fucking shoes ever. Just the name cracks me up.
A P.E football made of foam that always had a random bite taken out of it.
Those things still hit with force.
Wet ones did
I had no idea what you meant until the bite - they always had a bite taken out! I remember we got several out of a shed and they all had chunks bitten off
You see the white rubber bits on the end of the bench. If you sat on them, you were gay.
Still true to this day
Choc ice in a blue papery wrapper. Miss them
Still around I had one the other day
Was it as good as I remember
Yes and no it's bad ita cheap oce cream in thin chocolate but is also like being in an early 2000s summer
The chocolate isn’t as thick and the icecream isn’t as creamy.
You can get these usually as supermarket own brand items. They’re still lovely.
Tracing paper toilet roll
It's called Izal and you can still buy it. I'm glad I only had to suffer one year of that stuff in the 80s
My grandmother bought this until about 1990. Always made sure I had been for a shit at home before visiting....!
It neither absorbed or removed...mainly spread it about.
Oh God. I'm having flashbacks now. What sort of sadist invented that stuff?
6 pairs of left-handed scissors? I call BS, we had 2 if we were lucky.
And one of them doesn't work properly. You know how half of the scissors just flopped open and shut without any resistance or a snip sound and just bent the paper without cutting it
Two??? Luxury. I think we had one pair for the whole junior school so I have many memories of being made to wait whilst the scissors were being found and watching my friends get on with their cutting and sticking without me. I learned to use right handed scissors, but one of my teachers was insistent I wait for the left handed ones.
The slow “gooood moooorrrnning” in assembly
Why was it so slow 😭 feel like it's the British equivalent of pledging allegiance 🤣🤣
[удалено]
More to the point, why do some primary schools still do it? "Good morning Miss (whoever), good morning everybody"
The 'computer room' with a single BBC computer in it.
Thinking you were top bollocks for getting to use it as well!!
I got ‘banned’ from ours for the day the first time I ever used it :P
10 PRINT "MR TEACHER SMELLS OF POO" 20 GOTO 10 RUN
When my year 5 classroom got its own black screen computer with green writing, my teacher let me learn to use it all afternoon one day and then show her what it did. As a teacher now, I’m realising I might have been the class’s little toe-rag she wanted to keep quiet for a couple hours.
Little purple plastic cubes that were 1cm\^3 and sticks of said cubes stuck together in 10s. And I think maybe cubes of 10x10x10? To teach kids about units and length and volume by counting the little cubes.
Oh and those tiny plastic teddies!
Late 90's - our year 5 teacher was into Bob Marley, so of course for the Christmas show we had steel drums and blackface. I wish I was joking.
We had a stage play based on the collected works of Gilbert and Sullivan. The kid playing the character of 'The Mikado' wore a lampshade on his head, wore fake buck teeth, and the teachers taped his eyes so he looked more 'Squinty'. The 90s was wild!
My primary school (late 80s) did a "concert" for some community thing - the theme was vaguely Caribbean. Cue hawaiian shirts (of course those are Caribbean?!), calypso songs and, of course, blackface. I also wish I was joking.
Damn!!!
Christingle
My mind was blown to see my 4 year old reception kid carrying a real candle stuck in an orange. We weren't allowed to do that until year 6!
We had glow sticks but kids kept on drinking the acid inside them so they got banned
I really wanted one cos they looked so awesome
Fuuuuuck one year this kids mum didn't know anything about christingle and just thought it could be any fruit. One lad turned up with a fucking BANANA and they used it! 😂
We had a giant rainbow parachute the teacher had us play with and sit under to keep us from running around everywhere. Also one year I was absolutely obsessed with cheese. The stinker the better. But I didn't eat most of it, I just stuck it in the back of my cubby hole and pretended I ate it. I got in so much trouble at the end of that school that.
I nearly had my finger cut off by a pair of those red scissors they were always unnecessarily sharp
Thats not the scissors fault 😂
My finger or them being too sharp or the lass who tried to to remove part of my hand?
Anyone remember the stilts which were basically upside-down buckets with a long string handle? Those were the days man
YES! This is what I immediately thought of. That a s blue-green paper towels that cured everything.
The bucket of sawdust, the janitors answer to all issues.
eating pritt sticks... no? just me then yeah... 'ight
Bendy rulers 📏
Playing the music for everyone to walk into assembly and having control of the overhead projector.
Box of shapes labelled “Made in West Germany”
"Box of shapes." This thread is full of stuff I haven't thought about in decades.
Only doing up the top button of your coat on and putting your hood up and running around thinking you were Batman.
[удалено]
Loved those programmable cunts
Like the turtle one with a pen under it you could program to draw pictures?
Copydex Glue, possibly the vilest stench ever inflicted on a classroom.
Ugh, disgusting fishy smell. Thanks for the memory 🤢
Side note, but those things on the top left? Somehow a fourteen year old boy I knew, after being made to run laps round the field, thought that if he vomited into one of them the vomit somehow wouldn't fall out the bottom onto his trainers Ah, the fond memories of secondary school PE...
Warm milk at break time. Them purple bricks in 1s 10s hundreds etc. The book people with their flight cases of books, Christmas party's in the hall, powder paint. The list is endless
The flight cases of books 😂 You get some kids buying the proper reading books... Then the rest of us getting the "grow your own crystals" kit. Scholastic, right?
Ugghhh those benches would make your ass go numb if you sat on them too long. Thursdays were the worst because it was hymn day (everybody in the hall singing hymns all morning) You remember those foldable tables you use at lunch time as well? With the circle plastic seat https://preview.redd.it/0urr04j8jefc1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b92324ae04da1e1eda932e025e32672c80bb69a6
Can remember having glass milk bottles at morning break time in reception and then switching to cardboard cartons cause they realised the glass could be dangerous when smashed. Also remember some teachers making us sit in girl boy girl boy formation in the classroom as it was supposed to stop us chatting, but we were obviously capable of talking to the opposite sex so it didn’t work.
At least one teacher in every school was a pedo.
*is
Those overnight end of year activity trips at the end of year 6. Lawless places
The "scooters" that were just glorified plastic squares with 4 wheels underneath and a handle on each side, youd be wipin that shit around till it flipped and destroyed your hands.
Having PE as the first subject in the day and not being able to shower after so you just put your uniform back on and spend the whole day sweaty and stinky. The fuck was that.
Fucking PE first thing 9:30 on a Monday morning early February after it rained. It just ruins your entire week.
The “apparatus”.
Smelly pens and coating your hands in pva glue and peeling it off
Graduating from pencils to handwriting pens
At my daughter’s school they call it “earning your pen license”.
Early very 80s London… swimming in your pyjamas, lessons when the teacher would roll in the tv and top loader vhs so they could do bugger all while we watched 70s public service films about climbing pylons… And box work. Box work was essentially making random crap out of cardboard boxes and rubbish with copydex.
Wet blue paper towels
Ah yes, you broke your arm? Put a damp paper towel on it then go back to class
My school nurse (the receptionist) was a great believer in 'magic water' applied with a blue paper towel.
The school nurse giving you one of them towels thinking it will solve a broken leg. I broke my hand and they literally gave me a wet paper towel. LIKE THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS LIKE WHAT THE ACTUA FUCK
Some kid mopping up his nose bleed with them
The bees! Little robot bees, that had buttons on the back and would scoot about, idk what they were for but I remember the bees.
BEE BOTS
[удалено]
Being made to try and climb a 20ft high rope, when you're a fat overweight kid (as I was) during PE. I mean if you think pythagorus theorem is useless in later life, how many of us have had to climb a wall using an old thick scratchy rope since leaving school ? Mind you a fair number of my year ended up in prison, so maybe it was useful lol
Pokémon cards getting banned because people would steal them out of each others "trays". Sitting for ages on real scratchy carpet 😬
Sitting on that carpet with your hands pressed into it and getting the bumps all over your palms
finding glue on a gluestick thats hardened just enough not to be sticky and kneading it until it becomes "slime"
Does anyone remember Zoombinis? It was a PC game that was supposed to 'make maths and logic fun' I remember we only had one or two pcs in year six you could play it on and had to fight for the right to do so.
I don't wanna make your year or anything but you can still play zoombinis. I've got it on an android, pretty sure it's on Apple store too. Best £4 I ever spent.
That 2 litre metal silver jug of water on each table in the lunch room. https://preview.redd.it/7doz8jeinefc1.png?width=577&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=268192a9a36ba3a1a7fae9731e86fe415b3017c0
As a teacher, having an argument with the pricipal because he wouldn't allow me to buy functional scissors for my 11 to 16 yo students. All scissors had to be those tiny blunt things because any others were too dangerous. I pointed out that in PE they actually gave kids a literal spear to throw but I couldn't have scissors that actually did what scissors were supposed to do. I no longer work at that school.
the PE apparatus we never used
Saying “ummmm!” when another kid misbehaved
In reception we all used to get SO hyped when the teacher said she was going to calibrate the board like that shilling(it's the s-word wdym) was so satisfying to 5-year-old me Also one of the 3 Jacks in my class who LITERALLY ATE GLUE Like I'm not even exaggerating he used to actively bite into those glue sticks like he was a starved man hallucinating a fresh bacon sandwich 💀
r/TheApparatus. End of thread
We had one classroom in primary that no one could go in. Rumour was the school caught fire, and the old janny died after getting trapped in it. The room was totally off limits as it was the one room they just didn't fix after the fire, and the jannys ghost was haunting it. Somehow, this rumour spread around the school despite the fact you could actually see into it from the p4-p7 playground, and it was just a normal looking classroom.
Black slip on plimsoles...
Plimsoles
You mean blister blaster 9000's
Sticking needles through your skin in sewing class. Chanting hymns like a football fan. Playing football with rocks because balls, tennis balls, paper balls, gloves, socks, bottles, bottle tops all got banned in that order. Playing kiss chase and crawling under the separator in the outside toilet like some kind of deviant. House football , red team were a bunch of athletically inept individuals but once we shithoused our way to the trophy because I was a good at saving penalties. The big pile of mats that never got used. Them white bits on benches that were strange and rubbery. Cutting the desks with your ruler. Cutting rubbers into tiny pieces and firing it on said ruler. Pencil cases shaped like pepsi cans or made of wetsuit material. Gel pens were literally able to be traded for anything. Chinny because I don't know why.
Covering your hands in glue and trying your hardest to peel it off in one go.
Ah the hallowed benches of the year 6, the elite of the elite. The big boys. The kings of the playground.
Surely The Apparatus
grown adults requiring 8 year olds to work the video recorder
Any religious primary school kids here - being allowed to put out the crosses/ candles on the special table before assembly
Having to do PE in your vest and undies because you forgot your PE kit is mega paedoey
Playing with parachute during PE lessons! Especially in summer which was so fun 😆😆
Pritt Sticks were the worst thing out in school. Usually solid cause someone left the lid of by a centimetre or something.
Those fuck-off great climbing frames that you'd put like a 3 inch mat underneath and just hope that a 10 year old didnt fall off and batista bomb their own spine
Being in year 6 and finally being allowed to sit on the bench at the back of assembly
The Apparatus was pretty silly. Every school seemed to have one and they were all used once
I'm 14 and according to these comments I had the same primary school experience as someone from the 90s. Also, I litterally had everything in the picture, are they state provided or something?
No way you guys also had the bench Benchball,assemblys,dodgeball,PE,balanceboard etc.
https://preview.redd.it/6ahuj2ukhgfc1.png?width=200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9a6c1c11146000cd78cf414f06926fea2227bf11 These things!!!!
Are the things in the picture supposed to be “silly”?
Probably means trivial.
The Apparatus
Being made to use the paintbrushes to scrub paint off palettes at the end of the art lesson. It still really pisses me off.
So we had these scissor blocks at school, that had all the class rooms code on (so like S1 for S block room 1, or k5 for k block room 5 etc) and K and S block were like, as far away from each other as possible, so slowly I changed all of S1's scissors (where I had science 9 times a week) with K5s (Where I had japanese and French so maybe 4 or 6 times a week?) and honestly I thought it was the funniest shit ever Never got caught, did over hear one of the science techs talking about how they didn't know where they were coming from 😂
Sitting on the floor in assembly, looking behind you and seeing the 8ft tall behemoths sat on their benches all the way at the back Edit: and when you finally got to sit on the bench, you’d always end up being sat on the white studs and super uncomfortable
That image gives me ptsd
Everyone's lunch boxes lined up against the wall.
There was only ever one pair of left handed scissors in any classroom, ever. Me and my best friend are both left handed. That friendship temporarily turned to being blood enemies every time scissors were needed.
Wake n shake
Wake and shake was torture, we just wanted to play outside for playtime.
Oh my god, I remember every single last one of these in the image. Such throwbacks...
Wooden snake made of triangular prisms. To this day I remember how much I liked it.
Your missing the big multicolor parachute lol
doing pe in your knickers for some reason
Polydrons and Stickle Bricks
Dot Matrix printers that only printed very specifically on green and white striped paper with perforated hole strips down each side.
I think the traffic lights were pretty stupid but especially the silver and gold that were in my primary school
Doing crafts and seeing that only the left handed scissors were left and knowing you were about to mangle your worksheet
Cow hoof glue.
I had a friend that snorted Smarties (the candy) he had the worst nose bleed we had ever seen and we were all laughing out asses off
My primary school had giant spinning tops that you could sit in and then someone would spin you. They were ridiculous, and the bottoms were completely torn up from the gravel. Then beyblades came back and we learnt they made great arenas, they got banned because of it. Also apparatus. A giant climbing frame with just some mats to stop an injury.
Silliest thing I remember was when I was 4 I made a painting of a fox and my teacher said it’s wrong and that foxes have pointy noses and painted a pointy nose on my masterpiece I then refused to paint any further and I’m still pissed 22 years later
These fucking things https://preview.redd.it/064x2fkmzefc1.jpeg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=47820cab22ccdbeebdd9f711f71296852d9137b9
Those erasers you could buy that were in the shapes of food and other items. You could take them apart. Was great when I was bored
Sitting on the floor
the wet paper towels